The primitive culture of the Southern Region of the Five Ridges - so-called ' The Lingnan Territory' which includes the entire Guangdong Province, a part of Guangxi Province, Hong Kong and Macao of the southern part of China today, almost appeared at ...
The primitive culture of the Southern Region of the Five Ridges - so-called ' The Lingnan Territory' which includes the entire Guangdong Province, a part of Guangxi Province, Hong Kong and Macao of the southern part of China today, almost appeared at the same time with the Central Plain culture or even earlier. After the unification of the kingdoms under the Qin Dynasty almost 200 B.C., the culture of Central Plain constantly expanded to this region, simultaneously, the native culture in this region also got a chance to grow up steadily and finally merged with the cultures transferred from the north.
From the final 20 years of Qing Dynasty in the end of 19 century to 1997 the day when Hong Kong returned to her motherland, Lingnan Territory had played a role of locomotive at many fields during China's long term modernization. At the same time, there were many significant characteristics appeared on the respects of politics, economy and people's life style during the procession of development in this territory. Those characteristics originated from the ethnic elements , racial religions and native cultures have both positive and negative sides, of course, also influenced the development of this territory with advantages as well as with disadvantages.
For studying the power of influence which radiated from Lingnan Territory and covered the whole China and even to the rest of international world, we have revaluated the local cultures by strengthened the analysis on 2 respects - the internal factors and the external factors.
The internal factors such as nature environments, climate and weather, geography conditions, native languages, customs, native religions, ethnics, and the mutual influences between these elements are the vital forces of the local culture.
As the external factors, are the forces those from the outside world, from ocean over, more exactly, from the West. After the Sino-British War at the end of 18 century, the door of the old feudal Empire of Qing Dynasty, finally opened widely toward the world. Following the steps of the western troops, the western cultures also landing the huge feudal Empire from the south to the north as waves, invincibly. This was a great challenge for the ruler of the Empire as well as for the intelligentsia. The highbrows became a group of reformation, and Lingnan Territory also became a region in advantage of "first learn the new culture" and "first fulfil the new culture". Almost every new knowledge, new custom and new affair began from the southern Lingnan Territory. With a contrary mind, the people of Lingnan have had to face two completely different faces of western world - one of them - a invader, another one - a sophisticated and advanced visitor. The history concerning recent 200 years of China may be viewed as a record of anti-west on politics and religion, and intimate-west on science and learning.
Furthermore, We have tried to prove the relationship existing among the cultural characteristics and the modern history of China, the local economy of Lingnan Territory and the economy of the overseas Chinese societies. We tried to discover a way completely different from the traditional methods to explain the real causes and reasons which connected with numerous history matters in the past 100 years, for example, the common similar points between Tai-Ping-Tian-Guo the Farmers' Revolution, The Opium War (Sino-British War) commanded by General Lin Ze-xu, The 100 Days Reformation led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, The Xing-Hai Revolution led by Sun Yet-sen etc.
As a conclusion, we have to say that a developed and advanced Lingnan of today, could not appear suddenly, or built up just in a few days. There is a long history of numerous painful transforms and courageous challenges, some of them we have already known, and some of them are still waiting for us to discover.